The Metro Nashville Public School (MNPS) Board this week considered changing eligibility rules for admission to its two highly successful academic magnet schools – Martin Luther King Jr. Magnet High School and Hume-Fogg Academic High School. If adopted, all prospective students would be subject to a lottery system for admission.
The proposed rule change would not go into effect until the 2024 – 2025 school year, but if adopted, would sever established pathways for entry into MLK and Home-Fogg. Currently, Meigs Middle School and John Early Middle School serve as pathway schools to Hume-Fogg, while Head Middle School and Rose Park Middle School serve as pathways to MLK.
Board member Emily Masters introduced the proposed amendment at this week’s MNPS Governance Committee meeting.
Masters told the board, “What I’m trying to do now, with the board we have, that clearly has an equity focus, is for us to take a crack at providing a directive through policy that we are no longer ok with these academic magnets not being representative of the diversity of our city as a whole.”
Hume-Fogg and MLK are two of the city’s highest-performing high schools, regularly securing state and national accolades. Hume-Fogg was recently included in US News & World Report’s top 100 public high schools in the country. MLK came in at #219 on the list, containing nearly 18,000 traditional, magnet, charter, and STEM schools.
Masters, who is up for re-election next year, shared data provided by the district that showed that despite academic achievement, the schools suffer from a lack of diversity.
- 22 percent of the district’s Asian high school students go to either MLK or Hume-Fogg
- 17 percent of the district’s white high school students go to either MLK or Hume-Fogg
- 0.06 percent of the district’s Black high school students go to either MLK or Hume-Fogg
- 0.02 percent of the district’s Hispanic or Latino high school students go to either MLK or Hume-Fogg
Fellow board members had reservations about removing the pathways. They spoke of a need for more community engagement and a deeper dive into available data before adopting the amendment.
“Overall, I would be interested in how many students across the district are qualifying for our academic magnets.” Board member Erin O’Hara Block said, “Of those who qualify, where are they coming from, how many are then accepting the academic magnet slot? What impacts that?”
Under the current rules, students who wish to attend one of Nashville’s academic magnets must meet the following requirements:
- 80 GPA or higher (Quarter 3, Quarter 4, and Quarter 1)
- No missing or failing grades
- Met or exceeded expectations on TCAP (previously labeled On Track or Mastered)
- State or national stanine of 14 or higher
Students who wish to enroll in Meigs Middle School must meet the same requirements. Parents can enroll their children in the other pathways schools without meeting any academic requirements.
This year, 477 students applied to attend Hume-Fogg HS. Of the students admitted, 139 came from a pathway school, and 135 came from a school outside the established pathway. One hundred seventeen students were waitlisted.
Meigs Middle School received 455 applicants, with 243 students selected. The number of applicants was higher than last year but significantly lower than in previous years. The middle school waitlisted 185 students.
MLK had 229 applicants for its 7th-grade class, and 229 applied for 9th-grade. Of those applicants, 212 came from an established pathway, and 40 came from outside the pathway schools. Seventy-five students were wait-listed.
Neither school had the highest number of students waitlisted. Overton High School, a zoned school, had 142 students wait-listed. Lead Academy, a Nashville charter school, had 148 students wait-listed.
The amendment was tabled for further review but is expected to be brought forth again in the near future.
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TC Weber is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. He writes the blog Dad Gone Wild. Follow TC on Twitter. Email tips to [email protected]. He’s the proud parent of two public school children and the spouse of a public school teacher.
There is no solution to this other than a free market school system paid for with tax credits and vouchers. This top down enforcement of some elitist utopian social goal of ‘equity’ has taken priority over the proper goal of educating the best and the brightest to reach their potential.
A free market allows these people to have school ideology aligning with their own values, while others are also free to market schools aligned with a different set of values.
Everything wrong with MNSB in a nutshell. How about bringing EVERY OTHER SCHOOL up to these standards? The ONLY thing you do here is to ensure students who cant cut it in these schools get in and immediately are set up to fail as they shouldnt be there academically.
Ridiculous but so is the MN school system
Right of the NYC schools system’s stooopidity playbook. Nashville pretty much elected a runt version of Bill DeBlasio.
Oh, RUN On The Bend, RUN as soon as you can. Hubs and I are natives and we left 10 years ago….we saw it coming. The Upper Cumberland is quite nice but I’m not sure how much longer it will last. The Left Coasters, Yankees and Nor’easterners are coming in like locusts. The farms and fields and being paved over at a dizzying pace.
Nothing like destroying the only successful operation within the MNPS.
The thought of lowering itself to using race to “evaluate” what goes on in these schools is sickening. If those undeforming groups want to have success it should start with them raising their performance. But there appears to be little to no interest in doing that. This is educational welfare. The path to destruction.
Same old crap from Nashville.
Okay…I just wasted part of my life watching the whole interaction. First off, Emily Masters seems like she is medicated and most of them take to long to say whatever it is they are trying to say. Erin O’Hara Block seemed to be the only one saying anything tangible and brought up some good points I didn’t initially think of.
I didn’t hear that they were looking to ease the qualifications, but to find ways to get more diversity into the Magnets by removing the Pathway schools to the magnets. Could be a logistics issue..an awareness of the magnets, getting submitted for the lottery, etc.
WHY NOT SCHOOL CHOICE?
WHATS SO WRONG WITH MERITOCRACY?
By all means, let’s not produce the best & the brightest to compete in the world today.
LETS JUST BE CONCERNED ABOUT COLOR
How well are our students doing in reading, writing, & arithmetic overall?
Are we teaching Civics & Patriotism? Or are we producing hate?
The Whole Purpose of Public Education should be to provide the skills necessary for a productive life & good citizens for this country. Not every kid is gifted. Just a fact. Instead it seems the dept of propaganda dies everything it can to divide our children on the basis of skin color.
A House Divided Cannot Stand.
Could that be the real goal here?
These ‘equity’ initiatives could be considered a national security threat. How does a country expect to compete globally when it doesn’t support it’s up and coming young intellectual assets of the future? I really do wish Black students were on par with the Asian students, but at some point we have to recognize that bell curves exist. Not everyone is equal in all things. If they were, everyone could potentially be a world famous poet, mathematician, NFL player, architect, short order cook (don’t under estimate this one), etc. If there are correctable reasons why the Hispanics and Blacks are not proportionately represented in the magnet schools then those need to be addressed so more can qualify. Making things easier to accommodate the least common denominator does not benefit anyone in the long run. Just short term feel good points.
Part of Nashville’s accelerated decent into Progressive Marxist/Socialist chaos. I can’t wait to get out of this place.
so, make the high performing schools intentionally lower performing.
genius!